Hi Stanley,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were benevolence, stimulation, and self-direction.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was emotional stability.
You said your top three talents were spiritual, social, and analytic.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you felt totally clear about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to designing my own running watch .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Spend 12-15 hours designing my own running watch .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said angela will be proud of me .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Alternative distracting commitments (studying, clubs, YT) .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When it’s 9 am after working out/taking a cold shower then spend 2 hours designing the running watch .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in running .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Defensive when receiving critical feedback, and Defensive when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling none of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being responsibilities .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel Grateful .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Grit increases with age |
| Don't skip the romance period in uncovering interests |
| Personality is fluid and varies from circumstance to circumstance |
| Goal fusion helps make tedious goals less tedious |
| Implementation cues are incredibly useful (if then statements) in getting goals done |
| Deliberate practice is a precursor to flow |
| Praise publicly criticize privately |
| Don't neglect having a strong support system. All successful entrepreneurs do |
| Strategies & systems > willpower |
| If you want to influence others set an example |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Gabriella Gibson |
| Stanley is, without a doubt, one of the most kind and genuine people I have had the fortune of meeting in my 20 years on this earth. The curiosity that he approaches every interaction with is beyond admirable, and watching him interact with our group has taught me in subtle ways how to be a better person. Stanley always asked such thoughtful follow up questions in our group check ins, and throughout the semester these check ins became one of the consistent bright spots in my week. I remember one day during our check in we got ice cream from his church group, and as I watched him say hi to his friends it was evident how warmly they felt about him too. He is the definition of a ray of sunshine, but also is open about his struggles and when life is not going well - but he approaches these conversations in a lighthearted way that gives the listener hope instead of despair. Beyond this, Stanley is one of the most disciplined people I have ever met, and I have learned a lot about both mental fortitude and good routines from him. I’m grateful to Grit Lab for giving me the opportunity to meet Stanley.
On the topic of discovery projects, Stanley had by far (in my opinion) the most interesting, and also likely the most time intensive discovery project. Through him, I learned about the power of food to connect people across different cultures and interests. I learned about the potential that a good deed has to be amplified into more good - as his dinner parties transformed into raising over $200 for the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank. I appreciated how seriously he took the project and that he documented his progress on instagram - it was always a refreshing break in my feed to see what dinners he cooked and guests he hosted. His discovery project made me realize how much I miss having a kitchen, and I just signed a lease to live in a house with a kitchen next year. His genuine excitement about his project came through in his presentation, and I enjoyed getting to watch the other students in our section learn about the incredible work that he has done throughout the semester.
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| Philip Pan |
| Stanley consistently brought a positive and kind energy to our discussions. Embodying a genuine care for others and an interest in their lives, Stanley made sure everyone on the team felt heard, respected, and appreciated. Even on weeks when the team’s enthusiasm was tempered by stress and fatigue, Stanley engaged the entire team through both thought-provoking and insightful questions. Every team needs a leader like Stanley, and I am honored to have had the opportunity to get to know Stanley this semester and experience his unwavering positivity. I am confident that Stanley’s grit and kindness will be a source of strength for him in whatever he may pursue in the future.
I was thoroughly impressed by the amount of thoughtfulness and effort that Stanley put into his discovery project. Listening to Stanley describe his experience cooking Haitian, Afghan, and Chinese cuisines encouraged me to think about how I can personally become more adventurous in the foods that I consume. Based on the pictures that he shared, I can tell that Stanley was meticulous in his research and preparation of the dishes for his dinner parties. One aspect that stood out to me about Stanley’s discovery project was his ability to combine an enjoyable activity for him and his friends with positive impact for his community; it was great to see that Stanley was able to donate $216.50 to charity. |
| Vishal Krishnaiah |
| I think the word I most associate with Stanley is “thoughtful.” He’s always looking out for our team’s best interest, provides constructive advice in our weekly meetings, and never fails to bring us extra candy from the front of the class. I’ve enjoyed sharing stories with him, following his journey through cooking, and getting practically every “what do you think this graph looks like” activity wrong together. He’s very genuine, and always brings up ideas that our group had not considered before in our discussions. I want to thank him for his generosity and his kind-heartedness, it’s definitely made my Grit Lab experience far better.
As an adventurous eater myself, and as a mediocre cook at best, I admire Stanley’s decision to pursue not just cooking, but cooking with the intent to explore global cuisines, as seen in his discovery project. His project was unique in that in contrast to most other people’s, it involved a social and public service element that gave it more weight and meaning. Through his presentation, I learned how something typical and small like a dinner party can go a long way toward helping others, if only we have the creativity and resolve to make it something that can help others. The last thing I’ll add here is that the food he made looks great, and I can’t wait to see what he makes in the future! |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.